Long: Protecting the public, environment

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors unanimously certified an environmental impact report March 27 for the Watershed Protection District's J Street Drain project. As supervisor for this area, I believe we acted in response to protecting the public and the environment, following years of analysis and community input.

The goal: Increase flood protection for residents in south Oxnard and Port Hueneme who live within the J Street Drain's watershed. Without an increase of capacity in the drain, more than 400 homes are exposed to $55 million in potential flood damage in the event of a 1-percent-annual-chance storm (100-year storm).

The Watershed Protection District in 2008 began a mandated process to evaluate environmental impacts of increasing the size of the J Street Drain. The county held a number of public meetings that included recirculating the EIR in 2011 to reflect necessary revisions to the district's accountability to environmentally sensitive habitat areas of Ormond Beach Lagoon at the drain's outlet.

While construction of the J Street Drain will temporarily impact just over one-quarter acre of Ormond Beach's approximately 120-acre wetland, the lagoon will continue to function as it does now, reflecting a trend of the past 20 years.

In fact, the lagoon will likely enlarge even further, as all existing freshwater from J Street Drain, Hueneme Drain and Oxnard Industrial Drain will continue to flow into the lagoon.

It's difficult to imagine, but the lagoon at the end of J Street Drain did not exist in 1951. Neither did the J Street Drain, which was constructed as an earthen channel later in the 1950s, and lined with concrete in the early 1960s.

In its historical ecology of the lower Santa Clara River, Ventura River and Oxnard Plain, the San Francisco Estuary Institute documents lagoons to the northwest (what is now the Port of Hueneme) and to the southeast (fed by springs flowing through what is now Oxnard Industrial Drain).

Interestingly enough, a small lagoon began to develop at the new J Street Drain outlet, which would fill with beach sand pushed in by waves and wind and block flow to the ocean. The lagoon occasionally joined a similar water body at the end of the Oxnard Industrial Drain throughout the 1970s and '80s.

In the past, the district periodically opened a channel from the end of J Street Drain across the beach, so that water could flow unimpeded to the Pacific Ocean.

This practice ended in 1992, when the district learned that endangered tidewater gobies and California least terns had become attracted to the small lagoon at the end of the channel. From 1992 to 2010, the lagoon would create a natural breach channel to the ocean whenever storm runoff provided enough power to overcome the sand barrier.

On Jan. 18, 2010, a small storm combined with an unusual beach height from high surf and excess sand from beach nourishment, altered that trend of natural breach to the ocean. The effect: A public safety and environmental emergency when the lagoon overflowed onto Perkins Road, the Halaco site, the International Paper plant and the Oxnard Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The district secured emergency authorization to breach the lagoon, narrowly preventing an untreated sewage spill.

Meanwhile, the environmental analysis of the J Street Drain project generated an opportunity for the district to rethink its emergency response actions and best practices relative to obligations to public safety and environmentally sensitive habitat areas, which were then incorporated into our board's unanimous certification of the EIR.

However, before this project can begin, the California Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and California Coastal Commission must authorize the project, after soliciting additional public input.

With the board's decision on this much-needed watershed project, innovative practices and policies that balance public safety and the environment will now move forward. The public process was inclusive, effective and will provide for the long-term protection of the community and the Ormond Beach Lagoon habitat.